May is undoubtedly the prettiest month of the year in my garden; and the thing that makes my garden outstanding this time of year is the daylilies. I grow several named and un-named cultivars but my favorite is an old-fashioned variety of daylily called Hyperion. My wife’s grandmother got these daylilies sometime in the 1950s. For the next several years they thrived and reproduced so successfully in her Garden Oaks yard that she divided them and took them to her ranch in Lovelady, Texas. My wife’s grandmother passed away 20 years ago. However, the daylilies she planted almost 70 years ago are still thriving at her east Texas ranch and now, in our Brenham yard.

While daylilies make my yard pretty, my yard pales in comparison to the hundreds of feet of daylilies that line Highway 290 just west of Brenham on Magnolia Hill Farms (5059 HWY 290W, 979-251-4069). My buddy Nathan Hanath is an organic farmer and a commercial daylily grower. He currently has over 800 named cultivars for sale and hundreds more cultivars that he has bred. Right now they are all beginning to bloom and a visit to the farm will literally blow your horticultural mind. While Nathan loves growing organic produce, his zeal for breeding daylilies is contagious.

Magnolia Hill Farm in Brenham has 0ver 800 cultivars of daylilies.

According to Nathan, you do not need to be a professional to breed and grow beautiful daylily hybrids. With just two or more cultivars, a few horticultural skills and some basic documentation skills, home gardeners like you and I can create daylilies that are just as amazing as the ones grown by the pros.

Breeding:

Botanically speaking, daylilies are perfect flowers. That means they have both male and female organs inside each flower. The male parts are called stamens. There are six of these in the center of the flower and they are topped with the pollen you will use to make your cross. The female parts of the flower are collectively called the pistil. Pollen is applied to a part of the pistil called the stigma. In the daylily this is a single, long curved structure that is generally noticeably longer than the six stamens. To make your cross, gently remove a stamen from the first plant you want to breed. Then use it like a small paint brush to gently paint the pistil of the mother plant.

In this lovely daylily you can clearly see the stamens covered in pollen and the stigma that receives the pollen

When the flowers open in the morning their pollen is slightly sticky. In fact, according to Nathan, some daylilies have not even made their pollen by the time their flowers open. Because of this, the best time to pollinate daylilies is around 10:00 am. His experience has shown him that you will be much less successful with your crosses if you breed too early in the morning or too late in the afternoon.

Documenting Your Crosses:

While paperwork is not necessary to cross breed flowers, it will provide you with the information you need to understand what crosses work and which ones don’t. Some daylilies have 11 set of chromosomes (diploid) and some have 22 (tetraploid). “Dips” and “Tets” (as they are called in the trade) will not cross. Since it is almost impossible to determine if your flowers are dips or tets, good documentation will allow you to understand which plants you can cross and which ones you can’t.

It is a good idea to make a permanent tag that notes the pollen plant and mother plant when crossing daylilies

Good documentation will also allow you to begin to understand which plants do a good job of passing on their genetics. As you get better at breeding, your documentation will allow you to begin to understand which of your plants will more likely create good results when crossed with others.

Once you place the pollen on the stigma, immediately make a record of the cross. When Nathan crosses daylilies he attaches a little plastic tag to flower he just crossed. His tag lists the name of the pollen cultivar first and the mother plant second. These tags will not only help you remember what plants you have crossed but they will also be a visual reminder of which pods have the hybridized seeds at harvest time.

Here Nathan applies pollen to the mother plant

Growing your Crosses:

If you made a successful cross, your plant should produce seed pods in about 3 days (as soon as the spent blooms fall of the plant). The seeds in those pods will be ready to harvest when the pods dry out, turn brown and begin to open. For most cultivars this happens from mid to late June. Most pods have 6 to 8 seeds in them but some will have more or less depending on the cultivar. When the seed pods open the seeds are ready to plant. However, if you will be saving them for a while, you need to lay them out in a warm dry place and let them cure further for a few days. Once this final drying is done Nathan takes the seeds and places them in small, clear ziplock bags. Nathan cuts the tag that was on the flower down and slips it inside the baggie with the seeds so he knows what he has. Once your seeds are packed, place them in the crisper draw of the refrigerator. This will provide the the seeds the chilling hours they need to germinate.

The tags Nathan applies at pollenation will follow the seeds into the bag that holds the seeds and finally into the seed starting trays

Nathan plants his seeds around Labor Day. He fills 50 cell planting trays with a high quality potting mix and wets it thoroughly with a water/hydrogen peroxide mixture that is mixed at a rate of two tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide per gallon of water. He places 1 seed in each cup and lightly covers them in soil. He then uses this solution to water his plants until he moves the seedlings to his beds in early October.

Seed pods begin to form as soon as the spent flower falls off

While many people put their seeds under grow lights, Nathan sprouts his seeds in an enclosed back porch. Once the little seedlings sprout he moves them outside under shade. While most of his seeds germinate in a week or two, he has seen some cultivars take over a month to sprout. Once the sprouts reach 2 to 3 inches tall, Nathan plants them in partial shade beds that are well worked with compost.

With a few skills and a little practice, the average gardener can breed exceptionally beautiful daylilies in their home garden.

If you are going to be passing through Brenham you really need stop at Magnolia Hill Farms and visit with Nathan. His knowledge and enthusiasm for daylilies is infectious. I have grown daylilies for years. However, until I saw 800 cultivars side by side in a single place, I never understood why over 6000 people were members of the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS) . After visiting with Nathan I finally get it. Most gardeners enjoy creating things. While it is fun to design and install a new bed or border, nothing could be more fulfilling than filling your design with beautiful flowers that you also created.

I am currently growing the world’s most expensive green beans. While the beans aren’t really anything special, they have already cost me well over $100 this spring. My super expensive green beans are a variety of flat bean called Navarro. Bill Adams introduced me to these beans a couple of years ago and I like them so much they are now the only variety I grow. Well, let me rephrase that. Navarro flat beans were the only beans I was growing – until the bunny showed up.

I saved this little bunny a few years ago. maybe it grew up to be our afternoon visitor

Most evenings, my wife and I sit out in the yard with her father and watch the seasons change. About a year and a half ago an unusually friendly cotton tail started showing up and visiting with us. The rabbit would hop right up in front of us and then graze on my St. Augustine. Within a few weeks we discovered this friendly bunny was a girl. Before long we had two very sociable cotton tails joining us every night.

I think you see where this is going. We got attached to the bunnies. Unfortunately our friendly little bunnies did what they do and before long I could no longer grow green beans in the garden. I am not kidding. Last spring, I planted my 35 by 4 foot bed of Navarro flat beans three times. I harvested exactly zero beans. Then in the fall I planted again. You guessed it, no beans.

Getting my garden ready for my first attempt at growing under cover.

Since I have discovered that my wife is a HUGE fan of cotton tails, I have been forced to invest in some (expensive) hoops and nets that will allow me to grow my beans and allow her to continue watching the bunnies. I have never grown anything under cover before. So, instead of getting upset, I am looking at my new hoops as both an investment and a learning opportunity.

I am pretty happy with my fiberglass hoops from Mr. Garden

While I am complaining about the bunnies, I am pretty excited about learning how to grow under cover. Bunnies aren’t the only pests in my garden. In fact, until this spring, the squash vine borer had forced me to give up growing zucchini and yellow squash. Thanks to my new hoops I now have a full row of beans and half a row of both squash planted.

Right now I am in the honeymoon phase of growing under cover. I bought two products from Amazon to build my hoops. The actual hoop is a six foot long fiberglass pole called the DURAHOOP by Mrgarden.net. I bought 20 of the hoops. ). So far I have been very pleased with this product. The thin, flexible fiberglass rods are very easy to use. The only down side is the fiberglass part. Because they are fiberglass you need to wear gloves when handling them. I did not and I got lots of painful and itchy fiberglass shards in my hands. Other than that, they worked perfectly. I used my tape measure to create two identical arcs at each end of my row. Then I ran strings on both sides and placed the other arcs five feet apart. I then ran a single rod over the top of the arcs and tied them all together with zip ties.

I believe zip ties are the greatest invention ever! I use them for everything, including tying my hoop frames together.

Once the hoops were assembled I covered them with Summer Lightweight Garden Fabric from Green Valley Supplies. This product is designed to allow in water and light and add a little shade as it (hopefully) keeps the bunnies and vine borers away from my young plants. The fabric is eight feet wide and 45 feet long. My wife and I stretched the fabric over the hoops, then bunched the extra fabric up on the sides and held that down with rebar. At the ends we gathered the fabric together and closed it with zip ties. We held these bunched ends down on the ground with bricks.

My row cover is from Green Valley Supplies. While it is a little fragile, I have high hopes it will do what I need it to.

I have to admit, I am a little disappointed in the row cover. While I think it will work, it was kind of fragile. The zip ties that we used to tie the frames together poked two holes in the fabric that resulted in tears. Since I have not used row cover before I am not sure if all row cover performs like this or if I should have been more careful assembling my hoops. Regardless, I am fairly confident that the row cover will keep the bugs and bunnies away.

I am very excited about my row cover experiment. We have had 18 mph winds this week and they have held together beautifully.

Since this is my first attempt at growing under cover, my basic plan is to grow the beans and the squash under the fabric until they flower. I have heard that once the plants get this big they can usually survive both the vine borer and the rabbits. However, if this is not true, be sure to leave me a comment. Like I said, this is an experiment and I would love to hear any and all tips from any of you that have been successful with this.

BTW, bluebonnet season is now in full swing in Washington County. If you look forward to riding around and taking pictures of our state flower, then the next two to four weeks will be spectacular. Happy spring y’all!!!

Our grandson came for a visit this past week. We could not resist taking a few pictures of him in the bluebonnets!